Antiquity of the Vedas

A journal interested like the Theosophist
in the explorations of archæology and archaic religions, as well as
the study of the occult in nature, has to be doubly prudent and discreet.
To bring the two conflicting elements  exact science and metaphysics  into
direct contact, might create as great a disturbance as to throw a piece
of potassium into a basin of water. The very fact that we are predestined
and pledged to prove that some of the wisest of Western scholars have been
misled by the dead letter of appearances and that they are unable to discover
the hidden spirit in the relics of old, places us under the ban from the
start. With those sciolists who are neither broad enough, nor sufficiently
modest to allow their decisions to be reviewed, we are necessarily in antagonism.
Therefore, it is essential that our position in relation to certain scientific
hypotheses, perhaps tentative and only sanctioned for want of better ones  should
be clearly defined at the outset.

An infinitude of study has been bestowed by the archaeologists and the
orientalists upon the question of chronology  especially in regard to Comparative
Theology. So far, their affirmations as to the relative antiquity of the
great religions of the pre-Christian era are little more than plausible
hypotheses. How far back the national and religious Vedic period, so called,
extends  "it is impossible to tell," confesses Prof. Max Müller;
nevertheless, he traces it "to a period anterior to 1,000 B.C.,"
and brings us "to 1,100 or 1,200 B.C., as the
earliest time when we may suppose the collection of the Vedic hymns to have
been finished." Nor do any other of our leading scholars claim to have
finally settled the vexed question, especially delicate as it is in its
bearing upon the chronology of the book of Genesis. Christianity, the direct
outflow of Judaism and in most cases the State religion of their respective
countries, has unfortunately stood in their way. Hence, scarcely two scholars
agree; and each assigns a different date to the Vedas and the Mosaic books,
taking care in every case to give the latter the benefit of the doubt. Even
that leader of the leaders in philological and chronological questions  Professor
Müller, hardly twenty years ago, allowed himself a prudent margin by
stating that it will be difficult to settle "whether the Veda is 'the
oldest of books,' and whether some of the portions of the Old Testament
may not be traced back to the same or even an earlier date than the oldest
hymns of the Veda." The Theosophist is, therefore,
quite warranted in either adopting or rejecting as it pleases the so-called
authoritative chronology of science. Do we err then, in confessing that
we rather incline to accept the chronology of that renowned Vedic scholar,
Swami Dayánund Saraswati, who unquestionably knows what he is talking
about, has the four Vedas by heart, is perfectly familiar with all Sanskrit
literature, has no such scruples as the Western Orientalists in regard to
public feelings, nor desire to humour the superstitious notions of the majority,
nor has any object to gain in suppressing facts? We are only too conscious
of the risk in withholding our adulation from scientific authorities. Yet,
with the common temerity of the heterodox we must take our course, even
though, like the Tarpeïa of old, we be smothered under a heap of shields  a
shower of learned quotations from these "authorities."

We are far from feeling ready to adopt the absurd chronology of a Berosus
or even Syncellus  though in truth they appear "absurd" only in
the light of our preconceptions. But, between the extreme claims of the
Brahmins and the ridiculously short periods conceded by our Orientalists
for the development and full growth of that gigantic literature of the ante-Mahábháratan
period, there ought to be a just mean. While Swami Dayánund Saraswati
asserts that "The Vedas have now ceased to be objects of study for
nearly 5,000 years," and places the first appearance of the four Vedas
at an immense antiquity; Professor Müller, assigning for the
composition of even the earliest among the Brâhmanas, the years from
about 1,000 to 800 B.C., hardly dares, as we have seen, to place the collection
and the original composition of the Sanhitâ, of Rig-Vedic hymns, earlier
than 1,200 to 1,500 before our era!l Whom
ought we to believe; and which of the two is the better informed? Cannot
this gap of several thousand years be closed, or would it be equally difficult
for either of the two cited authorities to give data which would be regarded
by science as thoroughly convincing? It is as easy to reach a false conclusion
by the modern inductive method as to assume false premises from which to
make deductions. Doubtless Professor Max Müller has good reasons for
arriving at his chronological conclusions. But so has Dayánund Saraswati
Pandit. The gradual modifications, development and growth of the Sanskrit
language are sure guides enough for an expert philologist. But, that there
is a possibility of his having been led into error would seem to suggest
itself upon considering a certain argument brought forward by Swami Dayánund.
Our respected friend and teacher maintains that both Professor Müller
and Dr. Wilson have been solely guided in their researches and conclusion
by the inaccurate and untrustworthy commentaries of Sayana, Mahidar, and
Uvata, commentaries which differ diametrically from those of a far earlier
period as used by himself in connection with his great work the Veda Bhashya.
A cry was raised at the outset of this publication that Swami's commentary
is calculated to refute Sayana and the English interpreters.
"For this," very justly remarks Pandit Dayánund, "I
cannot be blamed; if Sayana has erred, and English interpreters have chosen
to take him for their guide, the delusion cannot be long maintained. Truth
alone can stand, and Falsehood before growing civilization must fall."2 And if, as he claims, his Veda Bhashya is entirely
founded on the old commentaries of the ante-Mahábháratan period
to which the Western scholars have had no access, then, since his were the
surest guides of the two classes, we cannot hesitate to follow him, rather
than the best of our European Orientalists.

But, apart from such primâ facie evidence, we would respectfully
request Professor Max Müller to solve us a riddle. Propounded by himself,
it has puzzled us for over twenty years, and pertains as much to simple
logic as to the chronology in question. Clear and undeviating, like the
Rhône through the Geneva lake, the idea runs through the course of
his lectures, from the first volume of "Chips" down to his last
discourse. We will try to explain.

All who have followed his lectures as attentively as ourselves will remember
that Professor Max Müller attributes the wealth of myths, symbols,
and religious allegories in the Vedic hymns, as in Grecian mythology, to
the early worship of nature by man. "In the hymns of the Vedas,"
to quote his words, "we see man left to himself to solve the riddle
of this world. He is awakened from darkness and slumber
by the light of the sun" . . . and he calls it  "his life, his
truth, his brilliant Lord and Protector." He gives names to all the
powers of nature, and after he has called the fire "Agni," the
sun-light "Indra," the storms "Maruts," and the dawn
"Usha," they all seem to grow naturally into beings like himself,
nay greater than himself.3 This definition
of the mental state of primitive man, in the days of the very infancy
of humanity, and when hardly out of its cradle  is perfect. The period to
which he attributes these effusions of an infantile mind, is the Vedic period,
and the time which separates us from it is, as claimed above, 3,000 years.
So much impressed seems the great philologist with this idea of the mental
feebleness of mankind at the time when these hymns were composed by the
four venerable Rishis, that in his introduction to the Science of Religion
(p. 78) we find the Professor saying: "Do you still wonder at polytheism
or at mythology? Why, they are inevitable. They are, if you like, a parler
enfantin of religion. But the world has its childhood, and when it was
a child it spake as a child, (nota bene, 3,000 years ago),
it understood as a child, it thought as a child . . . The fault rests with
us if we insist on taking the language of children for the language of
men. . . . The language of antiquity is the language of childhood
. . . the parler enfantin in religion is not extinct . . . as, for
instance, the religion of India."

Having read thus far, we pause and think. At the very close of this able
explanation, we meet with a tremendous difficulty, the idea of which must
have never occurred to the able advocate of the ancient faiths. To one familiar
with the writings and ideas of this Oriental scholar, it would seem the
height of absurdity to suspect him of accepting the Biblical chronology
of 6,000 years since the appearance of the first man upon earth as the basis
of his calculations. And yet the recognition of such chronology is inevitable
if we have to accept Professor Müller's reasons at all; for here we
run against a purely arithmetical and mathematical obstacle, a gigantic
miscalculation of proportion . . .

No one can deny that the growth and development of mankind  mental as
well as physical  must be analogically measured by the growth and development
of man. An anthropologist, if he cares to go beyond the simple consideration
of the relations of man to other members of the animal kingdom, has to be
in a certain way a physiologist as well as an anatomist; for, as much as
ethnology it is a progressive science which can be well treated but by those
who are able to follow up retrospectively the regular unfolding of human
faculties and powers, assigning to each a certain period of life. Thus,
no one would regard a skull in which the wisdom-tooth, so called, would
be apparent, the skull of an infant. Now, according to geology, recent researches
"give good reasons to believe that under low and base grades the existence
of man can be traced back into the tertiary times." In the old glacial
drift of Scotland  says Professor W. Draper  "the relics of man are
found along with those of the fossil elephant"; and the best calculations
so far assign a period of two-hundred-and-forty thousand years since the
beginning of the last glacial period. Making a proportion between 240,000
years  the least age we can accord to the human race  and 24 years of a
man's life, we find that three thousand years ago, or the period of the
composition of Vedic hymns, mankind would be just twenty-one  the legal
age of majority, and certainly a period at which man ceases using, if he
ever will, the parler enfantin or childish lisping. But, according
to the views of the Lecturer, it follows that man was, three thousand years
ago, at twenty-one, a foolish and undeveloped  though a very promising  infant,
and at twenty-four, has become the brilliant, acute, learned, highly analytical
and philosophical man of the nineteenth century. Or, still keeping our equation
in view, in other words, the Professor might as well say, that an individual
who was a nursing baby at 12 M. on a certain day, would at 12:20 P.M., on
the same day, have become an adult speaking high wisdom instead of his parler
enfantin!

It really seems the duty of the eminent Sanskritist and Lecturer on Comparative
Theology to get out of this dilemma. Either the Rig-Veda hymns were composed
but 3,000 years ago, and, therefore, cannot be expressed in the "language
of childhood"  man having lived in the glacial period  but the generation
which composed them must have been composed of adults, presumably as philosophical
and scientific in the knowledge of their day, as we are in our own; or,
we have to ascribe to them an immense antiquity in order to carry them back
to the days of human mental infancy. And, in this latter case, Professor
Max Müller will have to withdraw a previous remark, expressing the
doubt "whether some of the portions of the Old Testament may not be
traced back to the same or even an earlier date than the oldest hymns of
the Vedas."